Founded in 2002, the Society encourages the creation of watercolor at all skill levels and promotes interest, appreciation and enjoyment of watercolor and watermedia. Please feel free to attend one of our meetings. Monthly meetings are held on the first Wednesday of every month, at 10 a.m. at the Cincinnati Art Club, 1021 Parkside Place, Cincinnati, Ohio, unless otherwise noted.

Monday, April 24, 2017

Program Chair, Claudia Taylor announced the April monthly program
speaker, Rachel Rubin Wolf, book editor for North Light Books. She has a Degree in Fine Art, majoring in
Painting from Temple University, Kansas City Art Institute and the Philadelphia
College of Art. After taking time for
family and career, Rachel has recently returned to painting. Among her many interests are Biblical,
Rabbinic and modern Hebrew, traveling and many outdoor adventures.

Her career began at North Light Books in 1989, where she started the
Splash series in 1990. She masterminded
the production, judging, editing and overall design and layout of the books
that have now entered their 19th year of publication. She extended her influence to many other
North Light books. She has also took on
the role of Acquisitions editor in past few years. She writes for many books and publications.

Her personal art is displayed in her oil paintings. She explores subjects and stories that bring
out her sense of humor. Her recent
series of suburban geese exemplifies this expression in her work.

Rachel’s Splash series started input from David Lewis and Greg Albert,
also of North Light Books. Prior to
Splash, art was represented primarily in instruction books. This new concept in books put the best
watercolors of the day in one book, which just featured the paintings. She began by contacting all the watercolor
societies she could find. There was no
internet to assist her research. She invited
artists by mail and through advertising in the Artist’s Magazine. The participation grew to two to three
thousand entries for each year. Initially,
the submittals required slides and were judged on light table. They quickly
switched to a projector to review by showing on a wall. Now it is all digital. In part because of the internet, there has
been a big surge in entries from Asia in the past few years, as well as India. The typical subjects have focused on
animals, figures, flowers, portraits, cities, landscapes, still lifes,
abstracts, misc. Rachel pointed out
that if one is submitting an abstract painting, it needs to be good.

Rachel listed some critical ‘Dos and Don’ts’ for submittals to not only
the Splash series, but submittals to regional and national watercolor shows for
our consideration:

·Image must be in focus;

·Don’t show background;

·Make sure files are right side up;

·Don’t pick ‘popular’ (read Trendy) subjects;

·Strive for original and interesting compositions;

·Send in your best work;

·Provide accurate personal info;

·Don’t miss deadline;

·Respond to acceptance email to confirm your
receipt of their email.

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For the Splash
books, once accepted, you will need to submit better quality image for
printing. One must pay attention to how
their submittal reads digitally. Artist
must take liability.

Rachel revealed
some of her personal and professional observations in the kinds of things that
influence her during her judging process:

·Realistic paintings must be drawn well;

·Art should be for pleasure

·Interesting compositions will get more
attention;

·Originality is very important;

·Compositions within subjects should be explored;

·Some subjects get more submissions. They go in trends over time;

·Subject needs to be fresh;

·She has 5-6 rounds of selecting images.

·There is always a level of subjectivity in
judging.

·Naturalness of an image wins over self-conscious or
labored pieces.

Rachel reviewed a series of painting comparatives; contrasting
paintings that were accepted into the Splash books with paintings that didn’t
make it. Each pair of paintings were
discussed for positive and negative compositional aspects. Rachel emphasized that by the time she sees a
painting in her judging process, it has already been vetted by her staff so
that she only sees the quality pieces.
As she went through her thought process of analyzing each set of
paintings, Rachel explained how she measures the success or lack thereof of the
paintings she reviews. Important points
of emphasis are:

·Compositions need to be strong graphically.

·Values are often overlooked. They need to be strongly composed.

·Detail work within the value structure is
important.

·Differentiate between illustration and fine art.

·Uniqueness of viewing angle often differentiates
good work from great work.

Rachel confessed that the process of judging paintings for her books or
for shows is always going to be subjective.
Strong work will usually win out over less convincing pieces. She wanted to offer support for everyone to
take a chance and put your work out there.
To paraphrase a sports expression, “you miss out on 100% of the shows
that you don’t try to enter”.

Having Rachel Rubin Wolf come to meet with the Greater Cincinnati
Watercolor Society was a great coup. She
lives and works here in Cincinnati. She
is a major player in the national watercolor scene. The wisdom and insight that she provided to
our membership was invaluable to those in our Club that aspire to subject our
work to artistic critique in regional and national competition. We look forward to continuing our
relationship with Rachel and to invite her to be a regular contributor to the
success of our Club.

See you at the next meeting on May 3rd, where we welcome
Peggy Bishop. Peggy is the daughter of
our own Marilyn Bishop. Peggy is a
realist who paints in a variety of subjects including seascapes, landscapes,
animals, portraits, still life and florals.
In other words, she does it all !!
Looking forward to hearing from her.

Thursday, April 13, 2017

President Kathy Lang called the meeting to order. First of all the Club needs positions filled
for Club Workshop Chair and Treasurer.
Anyone that feels they can contribute some time to those positions are
encouraged to contact Kathy. The issue
of having one of the monthly meetings occur as an evening meeting was raised
again. July was suggested as our test
meeting. After much discussion, it was
determined by vote to try it out. A
further suggestion was to make it a pot luck dinner, which was agreed
upon. The meeting time will be 6:30 to
allow folks time to travel.

We still need a fall workshop Chairperson and volunteers. An interesting list of artists are being
considered. Anyone with suggestions
should present them for consideration.

We had (3) guests in attendance:
Jack Vehr, who has worked with Joyce
Grothaus and Susan Grogan;

Judy Groen, who enjoys drawing with pencil and wanted to learn to paint;
and Elaine Stoker, a friend of Rachel Rubin Wolf.

Mary Fleischmann gave an update to our Annual Exhibit.

·Hanging on Aug. 2nd, after our
monthly meeting at Barn.

·Show opens on Aug. 5th.

·Sunday, is the reception Aug. 6th.

·Show closes on Aug. 27th.

·The fee(s) will be $15 for one painting and $20
for two.

·The Summer Music Series Concert, ‘The Vivaldi
Effect’ 4-5 PM at the Barn on August 20th. Gallery sitters should plan to extend their
time for this date.

·All show entry fees to be given or sent to Kathy
Lang until the Treasurer position if filled.

We still are looking for a prominent art figure to judge the show. The postcard design will be similar to
previous years. A press release was
suggested by Marilyn. Diane Jefferys has
organized music for the show opening. We
are still in need of a hospitality chairman.
Deb Ward will again be called upon to provide painting labels (since she
isn’t at the meeting!) Each member may
submit (1) or (2) paintings. Info for
the painting labels should be sent to Deb (Do not send fees to Deb). Folks that are interested in being Sitters can
sign up at the May meeting. As something
new and interesting for the show, Sitters will be encouraged to paint while
they sit. We think this could be very
popular with visitors and could work as a great recruiting tool to our
Club. It has worked for other
shows. If the Club wants to have the
option for credit card transactions to sell paintings to prospective buyers, at
least one sitter each date will need to download an app on their smart
phone. More information on this later.

Treasurer Carol Fencl provided the report on our club finances. The Club finances stand at $6,074.91 in bank. Some membership dues are still outstanding
and will be coming in. As of April 10th,
Carol is stepping down as the Club Treasurer and the club extends its thanks to
Carol for her service. A new Treasurer
is needed to fill her shoes.

Lydia Rittinger, our Membership chair, reported that we have one new
member. This year, Membership books are
being emailed to the club membership in an effort to go digital and to save
printing costs. As mentioned before, if
anyone needs a hard copy, one will be available for the asking at the meetings.

Nancy Wisely has graciously agreed to take on the Scholarship Chair
duties. Thanks Nancy!

Some announcements made by members at this meeting:

·Bob Thornburgh and Claudia Taylor will be showing
paintings in a show at the Evendale Rec Center, starting the 5th of
May running through the 8th.
Times of the show vary each day.

·A few of our members will have paintings at the Wyoming
Art Show on May 21st. More
information on this show next month.

The next post will highlight the April Program host, Rachel Rubin
Wolf’s presentation.

Diana Marra will have a Solo Exhibit at Evendale Cultural Arts Center, Opening Friday March 2 from 6-8. The Exhibit is called "A Taste of Asia" and will of course have Sake and Sushi in addition to the usual wine-and-cheese Opening fare. Exhibit is also open 12-4 on Sat. and Sunday March 3 & 4. Diana will offer a mini-workshop - "A Taste" - on Wed. March 14, 6:30-8, cost $20 / all materials provided in 3 versions of oriental-style painting. For more information contact Diana.